?? Since it's played exactly the same way as baseball on smaller fields with less "powerful" equipment, this makes no sense whatsoever. Plus you can play a decent game with 3-4 people a side and play "automatics" And how many amateur baseball pitchers can throw a screwball, riser, sinker & 3 different types of curves?
My wiffle knuckleball has been unhittable since I was ten years old. R.A. Dickey would kill if his horsehide knuckler was half as effective as mine was and, as of two months ago, still is.
C'mon, man! You deliberately bolded the wrong part of my post. Once the ball is hit, the resemblence to baseball is gone. With kickball the fielder's got a waaay better chance to judge the flight and make a decent throw. And you don't necessarily have to play on a smaller field. Our old sandlot baseball games used a dead tennis ball or a new one with holes poked in it with a nail. You can play 3-a-side in KB, too- center field pitches is all. When I wanted to see curves, I picked up the Trac-Ball gear. My southpaw buddy and I used to throw blind around the corner of my house or his- now, that was fun. Someone needs to start a 70s/80s toy thread. It'd probably begin and end with Mattel, but Ideal, Hasbro and Kenner also had their say.
You absolutely DO NOT want to get me started on Lawn Darts and how stupid it is that kids can't play with them anymore. I'd wind up on more ignore lists than Schapes, Nicklaino, and Ties combined.
The kids of today have no idea. They'd be shocked that anyone made it thru the games we played with both eyes and all their fingers. Bicycles with no helmet, skateboards with no helmet, air rifles, home-built projectile launchers (a 15" 1x1 with a rubber band attached to one end and a spring clothespin on the other- you loaded it with the pop top from a beer or Coke can and mounted it on your bicycle bars), slingshots, various fireworks with part of an incense stick tied to the end of the fuse as a timer, Estes rocket engines glued or taped to whatever you thought would fly (it usually didn't). The would -be masterpiece of my ninth-grade year was me and the guy across the street breaking a couple packs of Cyalumes and putting it on ourselves and his dog to scare some younger kids one Halloween. Didn't work- they all knew the dog and she went straight to them. Parents were told years later at various family and friend gatherings.
All sounds familiar. The Reagan years were the death knell. Only half was Ronnie's fault, that being his Just Say No wife, who nagged incessantly that having fun was irresponsible. The other half was the development of the media scare scandal campaign, whereby the media would find "trends" in accidents (or even alleged accidents) and then wage a war against the activity that supposedly caused that accident. Unpredictable Audies, apples, child snatching, satanic preschools, BB guns, child's toys, there were always new things to fear.
Mom in Texas arrested for letting kids play outside unsupervised http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/mom-sues-polices-she-arrested-letting-her-kids-134628018.html
Doesn't surprise me. Once again, this is 50% Nancy Reagan, 50% the media. Collective lunatics we are. I am reminded as such when I visit Europe with my teenage son. Does he want a drink? Maybe, maybe not. Nice that nobody is fussing. Whereas I -- yes, me -- got carded in the States last week. We really are nuts. Many people don't realize because they don't leave the States, but collectively we're pretty cuckoo.
Me and my brother used to have duels with BB guns. We played bike chicken. And bloody knuckles. And of course there were the dirt clod fights on construction sites. If I found out my kids were doing any of the above, they'd be grounded indefinitely.
All of the above, except for bloddy knuckles- I just never saw the point. See, you're wrong for that. Except for the bike chicken and BB gun duels. I think most of my friends have been shot at least once with a BB gun. Doesn't hurt that much- the only risk is getting hit in the eye or ear. Daisy single pumps don't do any harm, but I'd never have even pointed my Crosman .22 air rifle at anyone for fear of lifetime grounding. 700fps is nothing to play with. I've still got a rabbit pelt somewhere at my folks' house from those days.
Honestly, the dirt clod fights were the most dangerous. The sun would bake the dirt so hard they were practically rocks. Then we'd climb around construction sites like we were the Viet freaking Cong and pelt each other with them. One of our crew became a professional pitcher; you'd get one of those rocks in the head then fall off the side into a concrete basement foundation. Then you were stuck down there and everybody would be raining more clods down on you. It looked like an intifada.
Ok, sorry. Here's an article to bring this thread back on track. Manhattan has wealth disparity comparable to Sierra Leone or Namibia.
Of course, the Manhattan rich don't live in walled compounds - just high rises with doormen, and the poor have access to the same services and some of the same city amenities that the ultra rich enjoy. Plus, the ridiculous wealth of some New Yorkers are really skewing the numbers. I do feel a little icky for defending wealth disparity. I'll have to go eat a baby to get my liberal equilibrium back to normal.
SoFla - I'm going to respond to your week-old post here. It's weird that Best Buy's service went to shits, because their problem is that people are using the stores as Amazon.com showrooms. Customer service (and I guess same-day pickup) are the only things they have. But you're right - some businesses are getting smarter, and there's evidence to suggest that the more you spend on your employees (in wages and training), the more profitable you are, which runs counter to the indoctrination MBA types have been getting for decades. 1. My point wasn't so much that big box stores should be built in high-density/mixed-used zones, but that the smaller shops that tend to be in city centers make better use of the infrastructure. 2. Ikea is kinda weird. Wonderful, but weird nonetheless. That probably requires its own case study. 3. Yeah, the San Francisco ballpark is great, and having the MUNI tram come right up to the stadium really helps. South Florida, like you say, is different. Two urban centers that are big and dense, but very auto-centric.
Please. It took an act of congress to get anther option than the B61 through that neighborhood and it's still not rolling yet. But if the MTA eventually does get its collective head out of it's ass the poles and tracks are still up behind Fairway.
If customer service is the only thing that they've got -- and with Amazon's investments to improve its infrastructure in order enable more and more same-day delivery, it may soon be the only thing they've got -- then they're well and truly screwed.